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While Georgia's misleadingly named Religious Freedom Restoration Act may still pass the state legislature before it adjourns, it had a major setback when its conservative supporters' true goal was exposed. Like similar bills being pushed across the country, it is masked as simply a measure defending religious liberty, but it is really a vehicle designed to give legal cover to discrimination. By a one-vote margin, the House Judiciary Committee amended the bill so it could not be used to trump anti-discrimination laws, with three Republicans joining all the committee's Democrats. The bill's supporters then voted to table the bill rather than advance a bill that no longer allowed discrimination.

But the bill isn't dead. Until the Georgia legislature adjourns on April 2, anything can happen. In fact, the House Judiciary Committee announced late Friday that it would resume considering the bill on Monday. But in some encouraging news, that meeting has been cancelled. As reported by the Atlanta Journal Constitution:

A specially called meeting of the House Judiciary Committee set for Monday was cancelled, leaving the future of the ‘religious liberty' bill in doubt.

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The back-and-forth on the bill comes as Indiana deals with the backlash from adopting a similar law that has led to calls of boycotts and the potential loss of tens of millions of dollars in tourism and economic development. Indiana Gov. Mike Spence on Sunday told ABC News the law is not about discrimination but refused to say whether it would permit a business owner to refuse service to someone with whom they disagree.

As Georgia legislators are learning, this is a bill that has the public's attention, and people are not happy with it. When the Judiciary Committee heard public testimony on the bill last week, far more people showed up than the committee chairman was willing to make time for. Among those who went to the state capitol to testify was Rev. Tim McDonald, senior pastor at First Iconium Baptist Church in Atlanta, former President of Concerned Black Clergy of Metropolitan Atlanta, and current co-chair of African American Ministers In Action at PFAW. He was ultimately unable to offer his testimony in person, but he submitted it in writing. Rev. McDonald wrote, in part:

Equality and basic rights should never yield to discrimination. But this bill would legalize discrimination, and it does so by distorting the concept of religious liberty.

Many other religious leaders here in Georgia have agreed and have opposed this bill. So have conservatives like former state attorney Michael Bowers, and businesses like Wal-Mart, which has opposed similar legislation in Arkansas.

It is clear that rather than fixing a problem, this bill would create problems, often for the most vulnerable among us. Handing people the right to use the mantle of religious liberty to harm others is wrong. My faith teaches me that I should speak out against proposals that could deny basic rights to others, especially when it's being done in the name of religion.

During the public testimony, bill supporters kept returning to one misleading talking point: Although the bill mirrors a federal RFRA that has been on the books for 20 years, as well as several longtime state RFRAs, opponents couldn't point to a case where the law was used to enable otherwise illegal discrimination. Rev. McDonald addressed this in his testimony:

[This bill threatens to allow discrimination] even though, and in large part because, the bill's language tracks the language of the federal RFRA. State courts are likely to follow the guidance of the United States Supreme Court in how to interpret this almost identical language. Unfortunately, with last June's 5-4 Hobby Lobby decision, the Supreme Court gravely misinterpreted that federal law. Five Justices ruled, for the first time, that for-profit corporations can invoke the law, and they essentially excised from the statute the requirement that it can be triggered only by a substantial burden on actual religious exercise. Under Hobby Lobby, having your religious beliefs offended is enough. So a state court following the Hobby Lobby logic could easily equate a business owner's being religiously offended by a gay employee or a customer's "lifestyle choice" with a significant burden on the owner's religious liberty. That is why the bill transforms religious liberty protection from a shield into a sword.

Keep an eye out for this. Until the legislature adjourns, the bill can come back to life, and conservatives in Georgia could succeed in weaponizing religious liberty in their state as Indiana did last week.

In some parts of the world, government officials won't help you if you don't share their religious beliefs. Citizens seeking to be served by government employees have to go from office to office, experiencing the shame and frustration of being turned away by those whose salaries they pay.

Yesterday, Alabama took a step toward becoming such a place, to the delight of the far right.

The Alabama House passed the so-called "Freedom of Religion in Marriage Protection Act" by an overwhelming margin of 69-25 yesterday. Among its provisions is one stating that civil servants have the right to refuse to perform any civil marriage ceremony should they wish. As AL.com reported:

In session today, Rep. A.J. McCampbell, D-Livingston, asked [bill sponsor Jim] Hill: "Why all of a sudden has this become an issue?"

Hill replied: "I can't answer that, sir."

Really? It isn't hard to figure out:

Tears came to the eyes of Rep. Patricia Todd, D-Birmingham, as she spoke against the bill on the House floor. Todd, the only openly gay legislator in the state, said the bill was drafted to discriminate against gay couples who want to marry.

"This is very hurtful to me as an openly gay person," she said.

Ever since a federal district judge ruled that Alabama's marriage ban violates the Constitution, the state has been a showcase of defiance. Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore violated the canons of judicial ethics in seeking to force government officials from complying with the ruling, prompting our affiliate PFAW Foundation to file a formal complaint with the Judicial Inquiry Commission. Because of Moore, Alabama quickly became a checkerboard where gay and lesbian Alabamans were locked out of full citizenship across vast swaths of the state based on the whims of local officials. The state supreme court then shut down marriages for same-sex couples across the state in a highly controversial ruling.

Now Alabama legislators are seeking to guarantee that even if the U.S. Supreme Court rules that lesbians and gays have the right to marry, it is a right they will not be able to exercise across vast swaths of Alabama, unless they can find a public servant whose religious beliefs do not include a vehement hostility to lesbian and gay equality. That this bill targets one group of people for second class citizenship cannot be seriously questioned. No one should be fooled for a moment that this has anything to do with religious liberty, a fundamental American value designed to be a shield from oppression, not a sword to harm others.

Last June, the Supreme Court gave certain for-profit corporations the right to deny women vitally important (and statutorily required) healthcare coverage that offends their employers' religious beliefs, claiming it was simply protecting the employers' religious liberty. Across the country, right wing extremists are seeking to empower individuals and business owners whose religious beliefs are offended by LGBT equality to exempt themselves from anti-discrimination laws – again, supposedly in the name of religious liberty. Conservative Christians aggressively seeking to deprive others of their legal rights regularly portray themselves as the victims of religious persecution.

People For the American Way has released a new report examining the many ways that religious liberty issues are increasingly coming up in public policy debates in communities across the nation. But this isn't religious liberty as it has been understood throughout our nation's history.

Authored by Senior Fellow Peter Montgomery, Religious Liberty: Shield or Sword? examines how the Far Right is working to transform this core American value from a shield protecting individuals' religious freedom into a sword that harms other people and undermines measures to promote the common good.

The report provides vital factual background and analysis to help readers better understand how religious freedom principles have traditionally been regarded, as well as how they are being twisted by a far right movement in an effort to reverse its fortunes as their substantive arguments are increasingly rejected by the American public. These distorting efforts come from conservative advocacy organizations, state and federal legislators, and even a narrow majority of the United States Supreme Court.

This report is an important tool to help understand and confront the Right in public policy debates across the country, as they increasingly seek to use religious liberty as a sword to deny rights to others, and as they continue to portray themselves as victims of religious persecution.

Similar to the better-known Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), which was at issue in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, RLUIPA is triggered when the government imposes a "substantial burden on the religious exercise" of a person confined to an institution. When that happens, the action can be upheld only if the government can demonstrate that the burden: "(1) is in furtherance of a compelling governmental interest; and (2) is the least restrictive means of furthering that compelling governmental interest."

In this case, especially since so many other prisons around the country allow inmates to grow half-inch beards without a security problem, few expected the prison system would win this case. And it didn't. The Court's ruling was written by Justice Alito, author of the Hobby Lobby opinion, and all the other Justices signed on.

Importantly, while Justice Ginsburg – the author of the Hobby Lobby dissent – joined the Court's opinion, she also wrote a separate concurrence to emphasize a critically important point. In its entirety, it reads:

Unlike the exemption this Court approved in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., accommodating petitioner's religious belief in this case would not detrimentally affect others who do not share petitioner's belief. On that understanding, I join the Court's opinion. [internal citations removed]

The removed internal citations are to her Hobby Lobby dissent's discussion of how religious liberty has always been recognized as a shield to protect people's rights, not as a sword to deny others' rights. Fortunately, Holt v. Hobbs did not present an opportunity for the narrow five-person majority to continue their project, begun in Hobby Lobby, to wholly transform the concept of religious liberty. But Justice Ginsburg (joined by Justice Sotomayor) was right to remind us of the traditional meaning of that phrase in American society and law.

A three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit today upheld the contraception coverage requirement of the Affordable Care Act as it applies to religious nonprofits. The unanimous opinion in Priests For Life v. HHS was written by Obama nominee Nina Pillard.

Like in Hobby Lobby, the attack was based on the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), under which any law imposing a substantial burden on religious exercise can be sustained only if it is the least restrictive means of achieving a compelling government purpose. But unlike Hobby Lobby, this case involves religious nonprofits rather than for-profit corporations. The law does not exclude the employees of religious nonprofits from its protection, but it does allow an accommodation so the employees can get the coverage without their employers having to contract, arrange, or pay for it. Instead, the employers simply tell the insurer or the federal government of their objection, at which point the insurer must offer the coverage separately to employees who want it. But some religious nonprofits assert that even the accommodation violates their religious liberty.

In contrast to Justice Alito and his far right colleagues in Hobby Lobby, Pillard devotes significant attention to why the ACA contraception coverage requirement is so vitally important. She writes:

The contraceptive coverage requirement derives from the ACA's prioritization of preventive care, and from Congress' recognition that such care has often been modeled on men's health needs and thus left women underinsured. As discussed below, Congress included the Women's Health Amendment in the ACA to remedy the problem that women were paying significantly more out of pocket for preventive care and thus often failed to seek preventive services, including consultations, prescriptions, and procedures relating to contraception. The medical evidence prompting the contraceptive coverage requirement showed that even minor obstacles to obtaining contraception led to more unplanned and risky pregnancies, with attendant adverse effects on women and their families.

She then explains how the regulations don't impose a substantial burden on the employers' religious exercise. They have no role whatsoever in the provision of contraception that they oppose. In addition, it isn't the employer's use of the accommodation that triggers the women's right to coverage; their right was triggered by Congress when it passed the ACA. Pillard gets to the nub of this effort to use religious liberty as a sword to diminish the rights of others:

Religious objectors do not suffer substantial burdens under RFRA where the only harm to them is that they sincerely feel aggrieved by their inability to prevent what other people would do to fulfill regulatory objectives after they opt out. They have no RFRA right to be free from the unease, or even anguish, of knowing that third parties are legally privileged or obligated to act in ways their religion abhors.

This will not be the last word on the matter. The same issue is being heard in other courts around the country, and the final disposition will almost certainly be by the Supreme Court.

Yesterday, People For the American Way members participated in a special telebriefing to discuss the Supreme Court term that wrapped up this Monday and to unpack some of the critical decisions handed down by the Court this year. The call, which was kicked off by PFAW President Michael Keegan and moderated by Director of Communications Drew Courtney, featured Senior Fellows Jamie Raskin and Elliot Mincberg, as well as Executive Vice President Marge Baker.

Discussing Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, Raskin explained the case and the damaging implications of the 5-4 decision. Highlighting the “extreme and extravagant” claim made by Hobby Lobby that its religious rights were violated, Raskin described the court’s decision that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act covers “closely held” corporations and noted that this creates a “dangerous expansion of corporate personhood.” Raskin described how this exemplifies the Court in the Citizens United era, where the far right Justices regularly find ways to rule so they can enhance the power of corporations.

Mincberg also provided background on RFRA and explained how the law was distorted and expanded in this decision far beyond what anyone had in mind when it passed by an enormous bipartisan majority 20 years ago.

Members wanted to know what actions can be taken to help address the imbalance in the Court and the troubling decisions made by the Roberts’ Court in the last few years. Baker addressed the issue of rebalancing the Court, emphasizing the importance of presidential elections on the Court’s make-up.

In its 5-4 ruling today in Hobby Lobby, the Supreme Court’s right-wing majority played fast and loose with the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), the law that provided the basis for the claim that religious liberty rights conflicted with the Affordable Care Act (ACA). As Justice Ginsburg’s dissent pointed out, the clear language and history of RFRA stated that it was intended to “restore” the protection of religious liberty that the First Amendment provided before Justice Scalia’s infamous decision in Employment Division v. Smith, which said that there was no protection for religious people whose religious practices were substantially burden by general laws. As a participant in drafting and helping get support for RFRA in the 1990s, I can testify personally that this was true. The broad coalition of groups and legislators – from PFAW to the National Association of Evangelicals, from Orrin Hatch to Ted Kennedy – would never have agreed otherwise. But the 5-4 majority in Hobby Lobby nevertheless claims that RFRA was, in Justice Ginsburg’s words, “a bold initiative departing from, rather than restoring, pre-Smith jurisprudence.”

This twisting of RFRA was significant in two ways to the Hobby Lobby result. First, it allowed the majority to rule that for-profit corporations like Hobby Lobby could claim rights under RFRA. As Justice Ginsburg pointed out, the Court had never so ruled before, since religious liberty protection properly belongs to individuals and religious institutions like churches. Second, it led to the majority’s ruling that there was a “substantial” burden” on religious exercise in the case, based on the claim that the religious beliefs of Hobby Lobby’s owners were offended by the ACA requirement. As Justice Ginsburg explained, pre-Smith law made clear that this kind of mere conflict with religious beliefs was not enough to prove a substantial burden. Instead, a requirement must actually restrict or burden “what [the person] may believe or what he may do.” Under this analysis, Ginsburg explained, any burden in this case was too attenuated to be substantial. After all, Hobby Lobby was not required to purchase or provide contraceptives, but simply to deposit money into undifferentiated funds that finance a wide variety of benefits; it was up to individual employees whether to utilize contraceptives.

These concerns are much more than historical or theoretical. First, the majority’s rationale could deprive millions of Americans of contraceptive or other coverage under ACA. Even if restricted to closely held corporations, more than 50% of all American workers work for corporations that could similarly claim under Hobby Lobby that their religious beliefs are sincerely offended by providing coverage for contraceptives or other services, and that would be enough to trigger RFRA. Second, if a corporation can prove it is substantially burdened under RFRA because its owners or board have a sincere religious objection to a government requirement, they can make exactly those claims to try to exempt themselves from anti-discrimination and other workers’ rights laws. The Hobby Lobby majority tried to downplay this concern by Justice Ginsburg, but specifically mentioned only that laws banning racial discrimination should be safe from this claim. For example, what about laws banning discrimination based on gender and sexual orientation? The 5-4 majority opinion is almost an invitation to businesses to further distort RFRA by making such claims.

The five-justice majority in Hobby Lobby finds that closely held family companies like Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood have religious liberty rights. There is nothing in their reasoning that would limit this startling conclusion to closely held corporations. In fact, the majority undercuts its own attempt to downplay the consequences of its extreme ruling.

Rather than come up with a principled way to distinguish a closely held company from the large, publicly traded corporations that exercise such enormous influence over nearly every aspect of our lives, they punt: They say that large, publicly held businesses are not likely to make religious liberty claims because "the idea that unrelated shareholders—including institutional investors with their own set of stakeholders—would agree to run a corporation under the same religious beliefs seems improbable." [page 29 of majority opinion]

Yet on the very next page, the majority seems to undercut this argument, pointing out that state laws provide "a ready means for resolving any conflicts by, for example, dictating how a corporation can establish its governing structure." Generally under those laws the corporate board and officers speak for the corporation, even if there are millions of shareholders with countless positions on various issues. As a practical matter, the shareholders don't need to agree on religious issues or anything else.

So no one should be surprised after this ruling when a large, publicly traded corporation asserts its religious liberty under the Religious Liberty Restoration Act to get a "pass" from a law it does not want to comply with.

In the Supreme Court’s decision in Hobby Lobby, the Court held for the first time ever that a for-profit corporation counts as a “person” under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and that a “closely held” corporation basically shares the religious exercise rights of its owners. This leads American law into a treacherous minefield, as Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg made clear in her dissent.

It’s worth pointing out, as Justice Ginsberg also noted, “’Closely held’ is not synonymous with ‘small.’” Hobby Lobby is a massive corporation employing some 13,000 people, but there are other closely held companies that are much larger. In a footnote, Ginsberg mentions family-owned Mars, Inc. and closely held Cargill, which are both among the largest five private companies in the country. Guess which is number two? Koch industries, with $115 billion in revenue and 60,000 employees. Brothers David and Charles Koch reportedly own 84 percent. Rounding out the top five private companies are Dell and Bechtel. Those five companies employ more than 436,000 people. What religious claims might their owners find useful to make in undermining laws that protect their workers?

With a far-right Supreme Court majority ruling in Hobby Lobby 5-4 that for-profit closely-held corporations have religious rights under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), Justice Ginsburg is rightly warning that the Court has "ventured into a minefield."

Although the Court says its ruling is limited to "closely held corporations" like Hobby Lobby (where one family owns and runs the corporation), there is nothing in its reasoning that doesn't apply to any other for-profit corporation, such as Exxon. And even some closely-held family corporations are enormous. For instance, Justice Ginsburg points out that the Mars candy company has 72,000 employees and takes $33 billion in revenue.

Large corporations already wield enormous power over ordinary Americans, and the far-right Justices have just handed them another way to exercise that power.

The Court that gave corporations the same right as people to spend money to influence our elections now says that these same corporations have religious beliefs. Dare we ask what rights they will be given next?

And the majority's assertion that their decision today won't give businesses the power to ignore anti-discrimination laws is far from persuasive, raising more questions than it answers. The five conservatives say:

The principal dissent raises the possibility that discrimination in hiring, for example on the basis of race, might be cloaked as religious practice to escape legal sanction. See post, at 32–33. Our decision today provides no such shield. The Government has a compelling interest in providing an equal opportunity to participate in the workforce without regard to race, and prohibitions on racial discrimination are precisely tailored to achieve that critical goal.

Note that the only type of discrimination the majority bothers to mention is race discrimination, although the dissent's discussion that they cite mentioned other types. Their decision not to include other types of discrimination was surely deliberate and leaves women and LGBT people (to name just a few) left out in the cold. Businesses whose owners cite their religion to support their anti-equality positions will eagerly take note.

Justice Ginsburg's description of this case as a minefield could well be an understatement.